


To Search a Meaning for the Song

by Arrested



Series: The Day-Dream [7]
Category: Ivanhoe, Original Work
Genre: Age Difference, Anachronistic Social Attitudes, Angst, Dom/sub Undertones, Historical Inaccuracy, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Master/Slave, Middle Ages, Rape/Non-con Elements, Romance, Slavery, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-26
Updated: 2017-07-26
Packaged: 2018-12-07 09:55:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11621172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arrested/pseuds/Arrested
Summary: A meditation on two lovers.





	To Search a Meaning for the Song

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Blue_Night](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blue_Night/gifts), [what_is_next](https://archiveofourown.org/users/what_is_next/gifts).



> Today marks exactly two years since I posted the first chapter of this story on AO3. I certainly hoped - but never quite dared to believe - that it would have come so far by this point. There is one more major story arc remaining, but in honor of this anniversary, I wanted to take a moment and give Wamba a chance to speak in his own voice again.
> 
> I am dedicating this to **Nightflower** and to **what_is_next** , who have been so amazingly generous in their support of my strange little tale, and who felt strongly about different pairings but found their way to overcoming those differences. Thank you both from the bottom of my heart.
> 
> It is also for all the rest of you who have enjoyed this story. Thank you for reading.
> 
> This story is my original work. All rights are reserved.

_It began with touch._

_A quiet place, a peaceful presence, and touch._

_He could still recall clearly his master’s face, the deep furrow between thick brows salted with gray and the stark lines that that time had etched around eyes the shade of storm clouds gathering on the horizon. He knew the timbre of his master’s voice, deep and resonant and edged with a growl when he was angered or aroused._

_Memory would supply these details in time, give the dream color and depth. But first, always, was touch. The coarse brush of rough palms that sketched the borders of his body with firm assurance, possessed him and gave him shape. Those hands laid bare all his secrets, gathered the fractured pieces of him that were worthy to be salvaged and molded them into a new whole._

_There was no urgency here, in this formless place, only a liquid edged eternity where he was content to drown in the miracle of a kiss, only to be revived, nourished by those same lips that sent him under again and again. They left him spinning in dizzy bliss, moving on to trace his jaw, a rasp of rough whiskers on his neck and warm breath fanning across his shoulder while commanding hands took hold of his hips._

_With their return came new sensations, fluid space taking form in the yield of smooth blankets beneath his palms, bristles of soft fur pricking his knees. A glow of rose hued light that had no sole source, but seemed instead to infuse the very air around him, as though he himself were the center of the blaze. Or perhaps it emanated from the presence at his back, the warm shape that covered him and spoke sanctuary to his spirit, steady reassurance and boundless compassion._

_Desire was not a thing he had ever known in himself, until his master gave it to him. Hunger he understood, and desperate cold, and the ache of a fruitless wish to be judged worthy of any small affection. None of these had prepared him for the consuming fire of true want, of his body and his heart yearning at once for the same being. That ravenous need that would only be appeased by taking its object inside himself, joining together in physical congress._

_It woke so easily in him now, the desire that had his hips canting and his knees spreading in wanton entreaty for an act that was, on its face, so alike to so many of his darkest memories. He harbored a quiet shame, within himself, that in the end he proved himself precisely the debauched creature his tormentors had named him. But they could not define him here, in this place. Here, he was only what his master made him, with those hands that neither delighted in his unwillingness nor desired his pain. His master demanded nothing from him but pleasure, plucked out of him touch by gentle touch until all the individual parts of him sang in delirious harmony._

_It was there, as he teetered on that peak of pure abandon, that the light vanished. From one moment to the next, he was plunged into darkness, and the sense of his master gone, hands and lips and refuge stolen away in one anguished beat of his quailing heart. He opened his mouth to call out, to beg his master not to leave him so exposed, but his strangled voice would issue no more than a wordless cry. He shivered, blind and petrified, with every nerve raw and shrinking from the icy emptiness that crawled like a stain over his skin._

_But something else moved now, just beyond the boundaries of that smothering pall of shadow. It made no sound, an unseen presence that drew closer as he waited to discover its intent._

_When touch came again, it was gradual, soft points of heat at the edges of his waist that were a vanguard for curving fingers, then broad, warm palms that cupped his sides, gentle. The reverence in that touch was unmistakable, and impossibly dear._

_"Oscar.” It flew from him on a breath, faster than thought, releasing with it all his fear._

“Wamba?”

_He shied, the voice echoing loud and jarring in his mind, mismated to such a tender dream as this._

“Wamba?”

_The sound of it rang strange to him of a sudden. It was not his name. And yet, it was the name by which every person he ever loved had called him. All his life he had been ‘boy’ and ‘you' and worse. The cruelest of them, the ones who pushed him furthest down the black chasm of debasement, called him ‘slave’ to remind him and themselves that the creature before them was not quite human. By the time they were finished with him, he often agreed._

_Then, by chance or by choice, he was Wamba, a name borrowed from one who was not quite a protector, not quite an ally, but the closest thing he knew.  
_

“Wamba.”

He opened his eyes, and weathered a bewildering moment of disorientation while his mind realigned the world around him. He was not on his knees, but his back, and worried blue eyes peered down into his. That treasured touch was still there, a warm weight on his ribs, solid and stark after the indistinct realm of dreaming. He took a breath to feel it shift against his skin.

“Oscar.”

“You were dreaming.”

Oscar hovered over him, earnest concern in his sleep soft expression. There was no denying that his headstrong boy was a man now, broad shouldered and strong featured, yet still so innocent in his devotion, so patient with him as he was not for anything or anyone else.

“I was.”

“You sounded frightened.”

He could not find words to describe the reverie, to explain the true depth of his gratitude to find Oscar there upon waking. So he said nothing, reached out instead to draw Oscar down to him. And it was so much better than dreaming, to see him, to taste him, to hear his voice.

"Do you want...?"

"Yes."

The callused palms were rough and gentle and so breathtakingly real. A kiss on his throat, a hand sliding up his back, a natural touch on his scars. Oscar forgave all his ugliness, the marked skin, the fractious appetite, the retreats into silence and the nightmares that stole his rest.

In return for that absolution, he could do nothing but take Oscar to him without reserve, offer him release in whatever fashion he desired it. Tonight, as so many times before, Oscar's desire was his own. They moved in easy concert to give that passion form, until he was gasping with the fullness of it, the rightness.

Yet even as his lover moved inside him, the trailing wisps of the dream lingered, the slow contentment of the vision of his master a foil to the immediate urgency of pulsing heat and rising blood. His master was and always would be a safe port for his his spirit, a fortress against the terrors of the world. While Oscar was nothing so fixed. Oscar was exuberance and chaos. He was an outstretched hand, a guide out into the unpredictable joys and tests of existence, to walk beside him with strength united.

They stood side by side in his heart, equally essential and equally cherished.

Perhaps he merely imagined the touch that whispered across his cheek, a ghostly caress where none should be, but it was peaceful, a blessing and an absolution both. It brought a smile to his parted lips, and a breathless exhalation.

“Thank you.”

Oscar lifted his head, panted out, “For what?”

It was a weightier question than he knew. He did not want Oscar to worry for him, and also could not bear to dismiss that other presence offhand, though it be no more than a product of his dreaming mind. So he held close the one he could, and spoke to both.

“For loving me.”

**Author's Note:**

> Ah, yet would I—and would I might!  
> So much your eyes my fancy take—  
> Be still the first to leap to light  
> That I might kiss those eyes awake!  
> For, am I right, or am I wrong,  
> To choose your own you did not care;  
> You’d have my moral from the song,  
> And I will take my pleasure there:  
> And, am I right or am I wrong,  
> My fancy, ranging thro’ and thro’,  
> To search a meaning for the song,  
> Perforce will still revert to you;  
> Nor finds a closer truth than this  
> All-graceful head, so richly curl’d,  
> And evermore a costly kiss  
> The prelude to some brighter world.
> 
> The Day-Dream  
> by Lord Alfred Tennyson


End file.
